Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I pre-ordered this monitor when it was first announced. I've now had it for over two years and use it every day. A few comments: o The quality of the display itself is simply *perfect*. It's sharp, bright, and super-responsive. The colors only shift very slightly when the screen is tilted. o The real estate here is *massive*. It's a world of difference from my 24" low-end Acer display. Keep in mind that when you're running it at the highest resolution (which most people will!), your menu bar and other parts of the OS X system will look a fair bit smaller than they do on other displays. Those parts of OS X are a fixed pixel size... so smaller pixels means they'll be smaller on the screen, and there's no simple way to enlarge them. o Using it with Aperture / Lightroom in full-screen mode: it's only now that I really see how sharp photos out of my camera are. There's more pixels than I had before, and the pixels are sharper, and both of these help to make photos look amazing. o I used my Huey Pro to calibrate it out of the box. The before and after calibration profiles are virtually identical -- that is, colors are perfect, with no adjustment needed. o The display has a Thunderbolt port on the back. You can use this to daisychain additional Thunderbolt displays, if you have an extra $1K to spend. But you can *not* plug a regular DVI monitor into this port, even with a DVI-to-Thunderbolt adapter. The second screen is dark. The manual confirms that this doesn't work. o The power, USB hub, speakers, camera, etc. just work so easily to dock my laptop too. It's all automatic and easy, and *everything* except for power goes through the Thunderbolt cable. So nice! (Kind of weird though that the power cable comes out at 90 degrees, while the Thunderbolt cable comes straight out.) o The speakers sound very full... in fact, a little bit *too* much bass and a bit tubby. Could be because I'm used to listening to everything through my laptop's tinny speakers. o One moderately annoying thing: when the computer is not outputting any audio, the monitor's audio circuit is entirely off. But when it needs to play any sound (new mail chime, etc.), you can hear the audio amplifiers turn on (click), play the sound, and then there's about 15 seconds of very quiet static / white noise before the amplifiers turn off (click) and go back to silence. This is exactly how the Mac's internal speakers work, and perhaps all computer speaker systems. The noise is not very loud at all. But in a quiet house, I notice it. If it was there all the time, it'd be less annoying than how it pulses on and off, like it does now. Turning the volume down doesn't make any difference. o There's a very, very faint buzzing sound that comes from the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Sounds like a transformer. It's not audible if my laptop's fan is running. It is goes away if the brightness is turned down below 50% or so. It's very faint -- I only hear it if it's totally quiet. Much quieter than the amplifier noise above. Also, apparently there is a fan inside, but I've never once heard it. o The glare from the glass front panel is fairly annoying. The glare is actually worse on the black bezel than the main display: reflections against a black background are a lot easier to see than against the white. On the screen itself, especially on light-colored app windows, the glare's not bad. (My office has indirect light from the outside right behind me.) Still, I soon removed the glass panel and bezel from the display entirely. This improves the glare situation *immensely*. The large piece of glass is held on to the front by strong magnets, but you can remove it by carefully putting a couple of fingernails under the edge, and pulling it off toward the front. Or use suction cups (google around for info). No adhesive, no screws -- just magnets, and it'll come off easily. This will then expose the actual LCD panel itself. The panel is still quite reflective (it has a glossy finish), but then there's just one layer of glass to reflect, rather than two, so you get half the glare or less, plus no multiple-reflections. It also gets rid of *all* of the reflections from the bezel of course -- which were more annoying to me than on the display itself. There are then some magnets and screws and other hardware exposed, but so be it. I've seen others who have custom-fit a matte bezel to cover the innards up again. With the inner panel exposed you need to be careful about not dinging it accidentally. But seriously Apple, please offer this in a non-glare version! The matte screen on my MacBook Pro is great to read all day, so I know you know how to do it! p.s. A thousand bucks for a monitor? Seems like a lot, but I figure I'll get at least five years out of this, which is less than a buck a day. ** Update: My original version of this review was written after having it for two days. After two months of using it, it's still fabulous. The glare is less annoying than it was at first. The audio amplifiers clicking on and off are more annoying than I thought they'd be, so I usually send audio to my laptop instead of the Thunderbolt display. The huge size and beautiful color remain fantastic. ** Update: After 18 months, still loving it. I should mention that I've also recently purchased a 27" iMac. Apple has redesigned how the LCD and glass integrate in the iMac -- the glass looks to be laminated right onto the LCD surface. It is definitely superior to how this Thunderbolt display is made. The new iMac -- with the glass -- has less glare than the Thunderbolt display with the glass removed. Also, Apple seems to have improved their noise gate circuit -- the iMac monitor does not exhibit the same behavior with the audio clicking on and off. Minor gripe: I wish this worked with the 'Mini DisplayPort' as well as the Thunderbolt interface. They are both Apple protocols and both use the same connector. Older MacBooks use the former, while the new ones use the latter. I have two laptops -- one old, one new -- and this monitor will only work with one of them.